


The Mooncalf and the Quibbler

by Rozarka, smutty_claus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Angst and Humor, Banter, Battle of Hogwarts, Community: smutty_claus, F/M, First Time, HP: EWE, Hufflepuff, Magical Creatures, Plot, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Ravenclaw, Romance, Shower Sex, Slow Burn, The Quibbler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-05
Updated: 2009-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:48:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka, https://archiveofourown.org/users/smutty_claus/pseuds/smutty_claus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After losing his temper to a series of provocations, a very reluctant Zach is sentenced to doing community service at <i>The Quibbler</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mooncalf and the Quibbler

**Author's Note:**

> Written by [thimble_kiss](http://thimble-kiss.livejournal.com/) as part of the 2009 Smutty Claus exchange.

**To: cryptaknight  
From: Your Secret Santa**

 

> **Title:** The Mooncalf and the Quibbler  
> **Author:** [thimble_kiss](http://thimble-kiss.livejournal.com/)  
> **Pairing:** Zacharias/Luna  
> **Summary:** After losing his temper to a series of provocations, a very reluctant Zach is sentenced to doing community service at _The Quibbler_.  
> **Rating:** NC-17  
> **Warnings:** None.  
> **Author/Artist's notes:** Thanks so much to my test reader and beta, who shall both be named later, for their assistance with this story. Cryptaknight, I really enjoyed your request and I hope you'll enjoy this, too! :)

 

The courtroom was small and stuffy, presided over by Periwinkle Brown, an ancient witch who smelled of camphor and garlic. Zach had stood with the rest as the white-haired crone first entered, wobbling on a cane, and had exchanged a look of utter disbelief with one of warning from Brian Cadwallader, his spokeswizard. As the case against him had been heard, the disbelief had been tempered by a realisation why the warning had been appropriate.

As she now entered once more and turned to face the room, her gaze sought him out with an assessing cool that seemed impossible from such rheumy eyes. She spoke with the bluntness he'd come to expect. "Mr Smith, I've reached a decision in the case brought against you by Seamus Finnigan and Luna Lovegood."

He nodded, his throat feeling dry all of a sudden. This was the third time he'd been brought in for similar charges, and he didn't expect to be let off with a modest fine and a warning this time. His gaze drifted to Lovegood and then quickly slid away as he caught her looking at him with dreamy eyes, one of which was still shaded all around with purplish shadows from his hex. She'd outlined the bruise with little silver stars.

"You stand accused of aggressive misuse of your wand to cause injury to another person – namely Miss Luna Lovegood – and of having started a bar brawl with Mr Seamus Finnigan and Mr Ron Weasley. Similar complaints have been brought against you on two previous occasions, both of those also involving drunkenness and attacks by wand."

She sent a scathing look Finnigan's way. "Now, I understand very well from the witnesses' testimonies that you attacked upon verbal provocation, Mr Smith. That has been taken into account. It does not, however, exempt you from the responsibility to keep your own temper in check and to refrain from reacting to childish slurs and provocations–" Zach sneered as Finnigan blinked and stiffened "–by escalating the name-calling into physical violence."

"On the latest occasion, your hexes hit and harmed a young woman who had not herself taken part in any provocation. I therefore find it sensible to pass a punishment that may motivate you to count to ten in the future. You're a promising Quidditch player, Mr Smith, with every possibility of a good career ahead of you if you can only keep your cool, and I hate to see young potential go wasted. My first intention was to pass you a fine of two hundred galleons in addition to damages paid to the Leaky Cauldron, and to take away your wand for two months."

"_What?_" Zacharias asked, staring blankly at her. "Two months? Your honour, you must be jo–"

"Shh!" Cadwallader's fingers closed hard around his bicep, cutting off the sentence.

"Young man, watch your tongue," Periwinkle Brown said sharply, and the tone of her voice reminded Zach of Minerva McGonagall in fine form. He nodded, attempting against his better nature to look humble. The crone raised a bushy white eyebrow and sighed.

"That was, as I began to say, my first intention. However, I've been approached by Miss Lovegood, suggesting another solution that intrigued me. These provocations have, as I understand, been going on from several quarters for over a year now, ever since May of last year, when you angered quite a few of your fellow students with your decision to leave Hogwarts Castle before the impending battle. Would you say that this is correct?"

A derisive huff came from Finnigan, and Zach half closed his eyes as he nodded sharply and tipped his chin up, watching the edge of the ceiling with his face set in stone.

Brown nodded, too, and her tone was milder as she went on. "It seems imperative, in that case, that you learn to accept the consequences of that decision with better equanimity. It seems that your friends are disappointed in you, Zacharias. But time heals most wounds. If you can learn not to rise to the bait every time it's dangled in front of your nose, past grievances may be forgotten and harmony restored."

At this point, both Finnigan and Zach huffed, whereas Luna gave Zach a smile that utterly unnerved him. He turned his gaze to the judge again. She was hopefully building up to a quick conclusion.

"Miss Lovegood is a good friend, Mr Smith, with sympathy for your predicament. She has approached me with an offer that may be a better solution to this case. Instead of withdrawing your wand for two months, I'll allow you to have it as long as there are no further problems, and while you'll still have to pay damages to The Leaky Cauldron, the fine of two hundred galleons will be waived – all this on the condition that you commit yourself to three months of community service, starting on next Monday, the 4th of October, and lasting until the end of the year, served two nights weekly at the paper where Miss Lovegood is editor, _The Quibbler_. Miss Lovegood offers to provide an example for you in anger management. As she stated, and I quote– 'People have found me rather peculiar all my life, so I've had many opportunities to learn to rise above derision.'" The judge smiled at Lovegood, who returned the smile serenely. Then her gaze found Zach once more. "Do you accept the verdict?"

Zach's mind had frozen to a blank of horror about the point where _The Quibbler_ had been mentioned. "She's not my _friend_," he protested.

"The evidence is to the contrary," Periwinkle Brown said sharply. "I'll remind you, young man, that two months without your wand remains the only alternative, and furthermore, that if this problem is not resolved and there is another repetition, the next step on your downward spiral will inevitably be a visit to the island of Azkaban."

Zach spoke through clenched teeth. "Your honour, isn't there any other kind of community service that I could do? Aren't there any starving orphans ... maltreated crups–"

"The defendant accepts the verdict," Cadwallader cut in, his fingers digging like claws into Zach's arm again.

"I would like to hear such acceptance from the defendant himself," snapped Brown, "as his motivation is of the essence in his rehabilitation."

Zach was reeling. Rehabilitation, the bloody _Quibbler_ ... anger management lessons from Loony Lovegood! And Finnigan, the tosser, looked like he was about to bust a gut laughing. Utter and complete humiliation...

... As opposed to two months without his wand. Which would kick him on his arse out of the team, he was sure. Across the room, Lovegood was watching him with a concern that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. And it was oh, so tempting to do the proud and arrogant thing, which was what came naturally to him, after all. But Zach wasn't _that_ much of an idiot.

"I accept," he said grudgingly, glaring at Cadwallader, then the judge, then Finnigan, none of whom flinched. He did not meet Lovegood's eyes.

"Good. A letter detailing the arrangement will be sent from my office tomorrow, but in the meantime, please prepare to meet with Miss Lovegood at _The Quibbler_'s office at her residence, on Monday next week at five. The court is closed."

Cadwallader and the other legal counsel shook hands with Brown. She also offered her hand to Zach, giving him a fractionally less sour look. "Good luck to you, Mr Smith."

"Thank you, your honour," Zach said, his voice leaden and dull as he met Luna Lovegood's dreamy gaze over the crone's head. His mind was ringing with one, burning question.

What. The. Fuck?

***

Zach stared in resentful misery at the stark silhouette of the house on the hill.

He approached, rang the bell, and somewhere inside the house, a cacophony of birdsong erupted. Zach stood stiffly and waited for the door to be opened; when it happened, he took an involuntary step back from the large, calm eyes greeting him.

Luna smiled. "Hello, Zacharias."

He gave a curt nod. "Lovegood."

"Please, do call me Luna." She flung the door wide open and stepped aside to let him in. "We're old friends, after all. Do you remember how much fun we had?"

He cut her a glance just as he entered the hall, wondering, not for the first time, if she was in possession of all her marbles. "Actually, er..."

"With Cedric," she specified. "When we were small."

He frowned. He did remember, but it was so long ago and he hadn't expected her to bring it up. During holidays, when he was a kid, he'd used to come to the Diggorys' house south of Ottery St. Catchpole, to play with Cedric or, as he grew older, just hang out with him. Cedric's mother and Zach's father were old friends from Hufflepuff House and Zach had been fiercely proud when he'd been sorted into the best house – Cedric's house. No amount of Hufflepuff jokes had ever managed to make a dent in that pride.

But there'd been a little girl hanging about. A girl with large strange eyes and a distant smile, an annoying little brat who'd somehow seemed to have Cedric's heart tucked into her apron pockets. Zach had been quietly, seethingly jealous of her butting into his time with his hero, and had more than once tried to suggest they shake her off their trail until Cedric had firmly set him straight that it wasn't happening. Quite a talking-to, it had been.

Then Zach had resented her for that, too. When she started at Hogwarts a year behind him, he'd barely acknowledged her with a brief nod whenever she said hello, and after a while she'd stopped talking to him, only giving him a vague fleeting smile when they passed.

It annoyed him hugely that the memory was giving him an uncomfortable pang as he followed her through rooms that for the most part seemed out of use. The house had been badly damaged during the war, he'd gathered as much, and it seemed she'd focussed on getting a few rooms repaired in order to live in, leaving the rest in ruin and disarray for the time being.

"This is the office," she said, walking in front of him into another room whose door stood ajar. "Next time, you can Floo straight in. The address is The Rook, Ottery St. Catchpole."

He followed her into the room, feeling thoroughly discomfited and cranky. The office was dominated by a desk that had been painted bright sunflower yellow, by bookshelves lining the walls and by strange creatures painted around the window sills. An armchair stood in a corner with a throw over it and two chairs stood in front of the desk. On the wall right behind the desk hung a poster, a fuzzy green-tinged picture of some saucer-like thing with a caption in large block letters: _'I WANT TO BELIEVE'_.

"I want it noted that I find this to be a ridiculous undertaking," he groused, flinging his outer robes over the nearest chair and himself into the one next to it. "I have no problem at all controlling my temper. It shouldn't be my problem that Gryffindor is a pack of hyenas."

She nodded seriously, sitting down at the desk and rolling out a scroll of sky blue parchment, before dipping a quill in the inkwell. Her hand moved, leading the nib in a small, flowing script. "'Zacharias wants it noted ... that he finds undertaking ... ridiculous'," she murmured and glanced up, her expression inquisitive. "Is there anything more you'd like me to make a note of?"

"No!" Zach snapped. "I don't want you to make any bloody notes at all! This is a violation of my privacy as it is, without bloody written records."

Luna eyed the written words thoughtfully. With a slight motion of her hand, she waved her wand at the parchment and the words retraced themselves into nothing. "I suppose I can understand that," she said. "It was a rather negative note on which to start our co-operation, anyway, don't you think?"

Zach sighed. "How do you expect me to feel about it? I mean ... what was going through your mind when you came up with this idea? Wait–" he raised a hand as she started to speak– "I'm not sure I want to know."

"Then I won't tell you until you're sure," she said with a small laugh. Suddenly, she pushed her chair back, and got up. "This _is_ ridiculous, isn't it? This desk between us like a token of authority. As though I'd have any authority over you unless you'd agreed to it."

"'Agreed' is a strong word," Zach muttered. He warily watched her walk around the desk, and realised that the desk between them had been reassuring. What now?

She stopped beside him and raised her wand again, towards an armchair in the corner. With a motion and an incantation, she transfigured it to a black leather chaise-longue.

"Muggles who work in therapy let their clients lie on a couch and talk. I suppose it might be more relaxing."

Zach stared at the chaise-longue in horror. "_Therapy_? I'm not your client. And it does not sound relaxing. At all."

"Oh well. I've only seen it depicted that way in Muggle cartoons; it might not be accurate." Something in her voice made him look up sharply, catching a twinkle in her eyes. Another flick of her wand and the armchair was back. She hoisted herself up on the desk, sitting on the edge, her bare feet dangling.

It might be relief or it might be hysteria or it might be her toenails that had been painted with frog faces in silver and bright acid green. Zach's mouth was twitching towards a smile, against his best intentions and against the annoyance that was also bubbling in him. It surfaced more like a sneer; it was the best he could do. "You're bloody _joking_ about this?"

"I hope you don't mind," she said, immediately smiling back as though the slightest bit of encouragement from his part was irresistible. "You were the one who said it was ridiculous, after all."

"I'm not here for therapy," Zach repeated firmly. He needed to make this absolutely clear. "And I'm not your client."

"Oh, I know that. It really was a joke. But I don't think _this_ is. That is, you being here. I think it's going to be nice."

"Nice?" Zach's voice rang with doubt. He studied her, more uncomfortable than he liked to admit. Lovegood was a fairly tall, slight girl, with long coltish legs, knock-kneed – her dangling feet pointed slightly towards each other, and it all gave her a childish air. Her dress seemed like an assortment of feathers and tatters, yet she was watching him back with undeniable self-possession, eyes wide and calm, her wand stuck into her blond hair over one ear. Zach liked the tangible, the practical, the sensible. Luna was airy and strange. She was _whimsical_, a word that Zach distrusted just from the sound of it. Still, he owed her now, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

"I'd have hated to be stuck without a wand for two months," he admitted tersely. He'd have been kicked off the team for a punishment that severe, that was the truth of it. He was a good solid player, but he wasn't yet one of the irreplaceable ones, the ones that could get away with murder. Or other criminal offences.

Her smile turned positively brilliant. "Oh, I thought so."

"And," said Zach, forcing back a sigh, "I'm very sorry that hex hit you. It was never my intention."

"Oh, it's quite all right," she said with a breezy little hand wave. "I know you didn't mean to, and Seamus and Ron were terribly unpleasant to you. I'd never have sued you for it, except Seamus told me that he would, and I thought I might be able to turn things out more fairly. Seamus is very nice, but he's got a rather self-righteous temper. I suspect it may be an oversensitivity to Crimplemoths on the Portkey across the Irish Channel."

"I suspect it may be simply that he's a giant tosser," Zach muttered. Crimplemoths, indeed. It certainly reminded him that as agreeable as she might act at the moment, Luna was not a person he'd willingly have chosen to spend two nights a week with.

Still, he knew now the answer to _why_ she'd suggested this, and it had been decent of her. So instead of snorting in disbelief at her theory, he only looked around the strange room, trying to stay on his best behaviour. He'd just have to bloody accept that he'd be spending sizeable amounts of time in it for the next three months. "All right, Lovegood. What did you plan to have me doing for you?"

Luna jumped down from the desk, pulling a file from a stack of papers and handing it to him with an air of palpable excitement. "There's been a sighting near Upper Flagley. Do you know anything about Burbling Butterwicks?"

"Unfortunately," Zach said, "no."

"That's all right, I'll fill you in. We've got some exciting weeks ahead of us. On Thursday I thought you could accompany me to interview two wizards who spotted a U.F.O. over the forests south of Hogsmeade, close to the edge of the Forbidden Forest."

His brow furrowed. "You-eff-what?"

"An Unidentified Flying Object. They're wizards come to visit us from other planets," Luna said eagerly, her eyes bright with enthusiasm as she grabbed a set of robes that had been hanging from a peg on the back of the door, and handed him his. "Portkeys don't work over such distances, naturally, so they've built magical ships that sail through the cosmos to reach us. There are similar sightings many times a year, it's an extremely interesting phenomenon."

Zach attempted not to sneer. "If they've sailed so far to visit us, why don't they simply drop to the ground and say hello?"

"Well, they can't be sure we're friendly, I suppose. Or..." Luna made a significant pause, her voice lowering – "maybe _they_ aren't."

He shrugged on his robes and jammed his hands down into the pockets. "I see. Shall we go and see about those ... burbling bricks?"

"Burbling Butterwicks," Luna nodded. She tilted her head, studying him. "Are you quite all right?"

"So far, so good," Zach replied tersely.

***

The first couple of weeks were an initiation into a tiny world where limitless imagination ruled. Most of her assertions were hogwash, of course. Zach went along, contributing sarcastic remarks (which, he learned fast, rolled right off Luna's back), practical assistance with her equipment (which ranged from the basic, like a wizarding camera, to the fantastical, which sometimes was half his own weight and more) and, he could only surmise, welcome company on her adventures.

Burbling Butterwicks turned out to be slimy little creatures that hid in waterways and lakes, releasing a pungent sweat from their armpits when provoked, which led to oil slicks on the surface of the water. The U.F.O.s turned out to be dancing lights observed in the sky, their quick, erratic motions caused by a clash between the extra-terrestrial magic of the visitors and that emanating from earth.

Or so Luna maintained. She had a way of giving every objection he made serious consideration and then coming back with a calm response that he couldn't dispute without entering into her wild breaches of logic, and before he knew it he'd be arguing back on her premises. And as she always stayed calm, he was the one who inevitably ended up sounding like a lunatic, ranting and tearing at his hair. Still, he couldn't help himself. He'd always enjoyed a heated argument, after all. And while Luna remained cool, Zach was, when sufficiently frustrated, quite capable of generating heat enough for two.

He'd dreaded the reactions from those around him, but they weren't as bad as he'd thought – or rather, the scorn continued from the same quarters he'd come to expect. His team mates at the Wimbourne Wasps had treated him fairly enough since he'd been picked up at try-outs the previous autumn, and he'd worked his arse off and proven his worth for the team since then. The article in the _Prophet_ mentioning the case was the first most of them had heard of his merits or lack of such at the Battle of Hogwarts, and there were a few curious glances that made him damned uncomfortable, but basically they seemed to feel that as long as he wasn't a coward out on the pitch it was irrelevant whether he'd been one at school.

There were still the same people sneering or averting their gazes if he met them on the street or at a pub. There were occasional whispers of '_The Quibbler_' and titters behind him when people passed, which made him clench his fists in his pockets and march ahead, looking straight in front. He wasn't about to get into anything that would disturb his precarious goodwill with the esteemed Periwinkle Brown.

And then there were his old house mates, who didn't seem to know what to do with him since the Battle. Except Hannah, of course, who kept addressing him as though nothing had changed, with stubborn good will. Zach ran into her and Ernie on a weekend after his first couple of weeks at _The Quibbler_, when he arrived to visit Susan at St Mungo's just when they were about to leave. Ernie predictably hemmed and turned pink with strained joviality while Hannah gave him a quick hug.

"I thought we might meet you. You still come here every Sunday night, don't you?"

Zach returned the hug, mostly to annoy Ernie, who was watching every second of it jealously. Merlin, when would the tosser determine the approximate location of his bollocks and make a move on Hannah? He'd fancied her since they were bloody fourteen. "Well, not every Sunday night," he muttered, glancing towards the bed where Susan lay in seemingly peaceful sleep. There'd been a couple he'd missed. But not more than that.

"I think she knows when you're here," Hannah said, and Zach averted his gaze. It was the sort of completely emotional and logically unfounded comment that Hannah was prone to make, and it bothered him for some reason to hear his own increasingly irrational hope voiced aloud. It sounded shivering and naked and pathetic, dragged out in the open like that.

"Yeah. Maybe," he said in clipped tones.

"How are you? I'm sorry about what happened," she said helplessly. "I mean, the ... thing, with Ron and Seamus, and ... everything."

"Yeah, well, Gryffindor are idiots, and Weasley and Finnigan could compete for England and Ireland, respectively, in idiocy," Zach snorted. He shook his head, somewhere between disarmed and annoyed by her concerned tone. It was beyond difficult to talk to his former house-mates about this, but he realised that she meant well. "I'm fine, Hannah. Got off lightly, didn't I?"

"Are you getting along all right serving time at _The Quibbler_, then?" Ernie blustered, insensitively elbowing into the rather quiet little moment between Zach and Hannah. Zach stared at Ernie in disbelief. Everyone else carefully tiptoed around the subject unless they were blatantly out to give him grief about it. Granted, the careful tiptoeing made him every bit as resentful as the outright provocations, but that didn't mean he was inclined to cut Ernie much slack.

"Tact is a quality to strive for. Or so I've been told."

Ernie's face turned red. "You're hardly one to lecture about tact, Zacharias."

"No, but when I'm tactless it's generally a premeditated crime," Zach bit back, thinking of how much more irritating it was to hear Ernie call him by his full name than when Luna did it. "And _The Quibbler_ is what it bloody well is. I'll survive, thank you."

"Gentlemen, please," Hannah said tiredly, hooking her arm into Ernie's again. "We were just leaving. Come and see us some night, Zach." Since last summer, she and Justin and Ernie had shared a flat above a grocery store on Diagon Alley. He wouldn't have minded seeing Hannah, and he liked Justin well enough, he'd even been able to occasionally have a brief tolerable exchange of words with Ernie before the damned Battle happened and turned Ernie from pompous friendship to uncomfortable pity. But the three of them together were just too much to handle at the moment. It had always been the three of them, and then it had been him and Susan. And now it was the three of them, and then it was him and the still, white girl on that bed. And all of them quietly wondering how he could have run out on his best friend when she needed him. When they all needed him.

He'd no idea exactly when it had become impossible to explain, but it absolutely was so, now.

"We'll see," he said stiffly in reply to Hannah's steady look, sitting down in the chair by the side of the bed and taking Susan's thin, limp hand in his. "I'm busy at nights, as you may have heard."

***

"Oh, you remembered to bring your broomstick," Luna said with a big smile when she met him at the door of The Rook a week or so later. She'd asked him to turn up later than usual, and it was after nine, the full moon hanging in a perfect pale round in the sky.

"Of course." He'd got it tucked under his arm, happy enough to obey this particular order. He always felt more complete with his broomstick along. "So we're going flying?"

"Well, not right away, but later. Do you like Mooncalves?"

Zach frowned, thrown for a moment. "Mooncalves? But they are real!"

"Of course," she replied serenely, "everything we write about is real."

"That's debatable, isn't it?" he snorted. "_The Quibbler_ prints loads of articles about things that have never happened and creatures that have never been sighted."

For a minute, she seemed to consider this. He watched her get her robes and put them on. They were soft purple and buttery yellow, and seemed somehow right on her even if they looked unseasonably bright. It was late October already and the evenings were getting colder.

She sometimes gave him paperwork, articles to proof-read or films to develop on the nights that he worked here, but more often she seemed to prefer to take him with her as company on her adventures in the field. And that was all right by Zach, he much preferred that to being cooped up in an office with paper and ink.

She only replied as she turned and raised her wand to lock up the house behind them. "You see, the thing is," she said slowly, "if no one has seen them, how can we know they aren't real?"

Zach heaved a sigh, the now-familiar frustration at her madcap methods of argumentation making him rake a hand back through his hair. "Oh, honestly. That's ... childish. Completely unreasonable."

"You think so? I think it's a quite logical question. A dilemma, if you will, between remaining limited to what you know and opening your mind to extreme possibilities."

"Logic can be twisted in all manner of ways," Zach retorted. "That something seems logical on the surface doesn't mean it's plausible, and plausibility needs to be taken into account, or else logic becomes just a parlour game."

"Oh, I don't know. Plausibility is a construct too, and often people cling to the plausible because they're scared of considering what is _possible_."

"Well," said Zach with a bit of a glare, "I'm not scared of the plausible _nor_ the possible. I just like things to make some bloody sense."

"Oh, I completely agree." She gave him a brilliant smile, tucking her warm hand into his as she led him a few paces down the path before gripping her wand. "We're going to a wizarding farm in the forests south of Hogsmeade tonight, not far from where the U.F.O. was sighted. Hang on, I'll Apparate us."

When the squeezing darkness let them go, Zach found himself at the edge of a bare field. Luna's fingers still clutched tightly around his. She was staggering slightly and he reached for her shoulder to help steady her as they both found their feet.

"Thanks," she said. She straightened herself and looked around, as Zach did the same. Around them, shorn fields stretched to all sides in the light of the full moon, except to their backs where there were dark looming woods. He figured that they must be somewhere on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest.

Luna's eyes were full of excitement, and in the moonlight they seemed like pure quicksilver.

"We'll hide here," she decided, glancing over her shoulder at him as she slipped in between the tree trunks and hanging branches. "And wait."

"For what? A U.F.O.? Or a Mooncalf? Isn't that out of season?"

"No, they come out of their burrows all year round. There's one living in that little hillock over there." She pointed to a small round in the terrain, on the other side of the fields. "It's just that they're even more shy in the winter, and won't always dance unless there's tall grass around them, so we'll have to wait and see if we're lucky."

Zach shook out the blanket and put it on the ground in front of a large, thick tree trunk. "What exactly is it we're looking for tonight?"

She settled down on the blanket with her back to the trunk, gazing up at him as she made room for him beside her. "Let's say that I've got a theory," she replied, with a pleased nod to herself that made Zach's lips twitch. He cast disillusionment and muffling charms around them and then eased down on the ground beside her, settling companionably close. He wasn't sure how it had happened, but he somewhat ... enjoyed their frustrating conversations. However vehemently he might disagree with her in their arguments, Luna was a good sport, he'd give her that. And she'd never once as much as alluded to his actions in May last year, much less tried to make him feel bad about them. She seemed to simply enjoy his company. After the last year and a half, there was something terribly disarming about that.

"Go on, then," he said, rolling his eyes, but his tone was more indulgent than snide. "Let's hear this theory of yours, and I'll give it due consideration before pointing out every gaping logical hole in it."

She laughed softly. "Start by telling me what you know about Mooncalves."

Zach frowned. "Is this a test? I know what they look like, of course: spindly legs, big feet. Damned ungainly looking things. They come out in the moonlight and dance in patterns in meadows and fields. It's believed to be a part of their mating ritual, although it's performed outside the mating season as well."

"It is actually very beautiful," Luna said seriously. She looked at him with a tilt of her head. "Do you know what Muggles think about those patterns?"

"No." He shrugged. How would he know that? But Luna gathered her information widely from both Wizarding and Muggle sources, both of them no doubt equally disreputable.

"They believe that they're patterns left behind by the alien wizards' star-ships," Luna said, her clear, soft voice getting that slight breathless note it did when she was excited about something. "There was an article about it in an issue of _The Sunday Sport_ last month."

Zach lowered his head to look into her upturned face. The disbelief in his eyes faltered somewhat as he registered how pretty she was in the cool, blue-tinged light. Her hair shone where it fell over her shoulders and her eyes were alive with that calm intelligence that stopped every sensible instinct in him that wanted to pronounce her simply naive or crazy. "All right," he said. "The Muggles believe that, but we know better, don't we?"

"Well, we always like to think so," Luna said. "But what if the truth lies somewhere in between? The sighting in Hogsmeade was very close to this Mooncalf's burrow. There may be a connection. Perhaps the Mooncalf can call the ships with its dance. They may even be descendants of visitors from the stars from earlier journeys."

Zach was quiet for half a minute, digesting this. Then, with a sigh, he draped an arm around her shoulders, looking at her earnestly. "Luna. Listen to me. Or rather, listen to what you're saying. You're saying 'what if', and 'may be', and 'perhaps' and not one solid proof among them. That's a lot of qualifications for something that's only speculation over a coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidences," Luna said firmly. She'd sunk closer as he put an arm around her; he'd been able to feel the soft yielding motion, but there was nothing yielding about the look she gave him. She could be incredibly stubborn. "Coincidence is a terribly unimaginative explanation for something strange, Zacharias."

"Well," Zach said with a sigh, feeling genuinely guilty for being the bearer of bad news, "I hate to tell you this, but sometimes reality is just bloody boring."

"Not unless you choose for it to be."

"You can't choose what is real! It either is, or it isn't. Luna, if you could just accept that, your paper could become a truly valuable correction to the more ... conventional news."

He'd not meant it cruelly; he was, in his own way, honestly trying to offer good advice, but he could feel her start to withdraw from his companionable embrace. "How would you know? You're so scared to scratch the surface and find something that challenges your preconceptions," she said coolly.

"I'm not scared. I'm just fucking trying to use my brain for what it was meant for." Zach felt stung, and his voice was sharper than he had intended. He was a tad touchy on the subject of being scared or cowardly. He'd heard the words tossed at him a few times too often, of late. But just as he started to pull back his arm from around her shoulders, they both stiffened as something moved across the field. "Shh," he said, almost soundlessly, just as she put a finger across his lips, a gentle, apologetic touch as though she already regretted her annoyance with him.

Zach relented and let his arm lie around her shoulders again. He regretted speaking without thinking too – he'd realised weeks ago that she was a lot more sensitive about slights to that bloody paper of her late father's than she was about arguments against any of her speculations as such. They sat quite still and watched as the strange grey creature moved into the field in a floaty, shuffling gait. It wasn't beautiful. He couldn't understand how Luna could think so. He only felt embarrassed for it, cringing as it started a slow, comical dance in the moonlight.

But her expression was rapt as she watched the dance, lips parted and eyes wide with wonder, and as Zach watched her, the beauty that she clearly saw was somehow filtered back in his mind as a restless sort of ache in his gut – he'd like to call it impatience, but it was more like a longing, if he were honest. He glanced back to the field, trying to glimpse whatever it was that she saw that put that look on her face. The grey smooth pelt of the creature was like a shadow in the frosty mist, and it held its heavy head aloft to the moon in some sort of devotional trance, moving in deliberate patterns of circles and cross-sections that they could only guess at from this angle.

It still wasn't beautiful. Luna was the one who imbued the sight with beauty, but some of it reflected back to him – some sort of understanding, at least. Something, a respect rather than pity, that made him stop cringing and instead sit very still, squeezing Luna's shoulders absently, breathing slowly in time with her warm, white puffs of misty breath into the night air. All they could hear besides the crackling sound of the Mooncalf's feet on the ground was the occasional rustle of small things in the undergrowth, the eerie hoot of an owl, the soft, steady nearby croak of frogs in a pond.

It lasted for nearly an hour. They'd not had time to cast a heating charm and had not wanted to risk getting their wands out in case casting the spell would alert the Mooncalf to their magic, and by the time the creature moved back to the entrance of its burrow, their still positions in the autumn cold had sent them pressing close together for warmth. Zach's entire left side felt warm and snug from her, while the right hand side, especially of his arse, felt frozen numb.

The field was empty now, misty with frost, moonlight and mystery seeming to hang over it like a veil in the wake of the strange dance. Zach glanced down at Luna. She looked lost in a dream, and her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red from cold. Breathing out in a sigh, she looked up and met his gaze. Her lips formed a smile as she took in his expression. "I d-did tell you it was b-beautiful." Her teeth were chattering.

He nodded, the words he wanted to say getting stuck in his throat. He rubbed her shoulder and then gripped her hand, pulling her with him as he got to his feet. "No one likes a person who says 'I told you so'," Zach said with a haughty smirk, well aware that he himself was very much in the habit of doing exactly this. "C'mon, let's get you warmed up."

"It's not so bad. You kept me warm. It's mostly my feet and my behind that are numb."

Zach grinned and pulled her into a brisk embrace, his hands rubbing down her back. He did stop short of straying down to her arse, although he couldn't say he wasn't at least a little bit tempted.

"You liked that, didn't you?" Luna said, smiling up at him. "You're excited, too."

"You shouldn't go around accusing men of being excited, especially not when they're holding you this close," Zach warned her, raising his eyebrows.

She laughed merrily. "Well, I think the full moon madness has got into you a little. And the Mooncalf dance, too." She sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder as she gazed out at the field. "Did you know that the Muggles say 'mooncalf' about someone who's silly and naive? Maybe that's why I like them so much. People call me those things, too. Of course–" she took a step back, grabbing his hands and grinning at him. "The Muggles believe that Mooncalves are completely hypothetical. Fictional. Non-_plausible_."

He enjoyed the playful provocation dancing in her eyes. It seemed the moon had got into her, too. And for some reason, he didn't mind being teased by her. Luna was gentle. A quality he'd never paid much attention to before, but many months of being on the not so fun end of barbs and taunts and arrogance had taught him a better appreciation. "I could argue with you until the next full moon," he said lazily, "but my brain is frozen stiff." It wasn't exactly a concession to the point she'd made, but it was perhaps a permission granted to take it as such. He let go of her hands and picked up the blanket, shrinking it with his wand and tucking it in his pocket. Straightening himself again, he had his broomstick in hand. "Now what?" he asked her expectantly.

"Oh, now comes the really exciting part!" She rummaged inside her robes and came up with parchment and a stick of charcoal. "I have to ride with you; I'll need my hands free."

"That does sound really exciting," Zach commented, grinning as she looked at him, her head tilted in such serene query at him that it was hard to guess whether it was innocence or slyness behind it. He straddled his broom, letting it hover high enough that he had his toes just touching the ground, and reached out a hand to her to assist her as she approached. She chose to sit in front of him, so he inched back and lowered the broom enough to allow her to mount it comfortably.

And a few seconds later, he had her round, firm bum pressed snugly up against his crotch. Zach raised his eyebrows, definitely not minding, but again wondering if she'd even considered the consequences. Of course, knowing her single-mindedness, she'd be so focussed on that parchment and charcoal, she'd probably not even notice his inevitable hard-on.

Slowly, he kicked them off the ground, rising carefully, one hand on the broom handle and the other around her waist to steady her.

"Above the field," she instructed. "Higher, enough so I can see the entire field."

He brought them up in a slow, wide circular motion, gliding out fifty feet above the centre of the field before he glanced down. From up here, he could see clearly what she'd been after. Where the Mooncalf had placed its large feet on its intricate paths around the field, the night dew had been trampled into the ground and, despite the crops being shorn, they could still see the darker tracks of its dance.

They formed a kind of spiral pattern, like crescent spokes spinning out from the centre of a wheeling, flaming sun. And it was bloody huge. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. No matter that he disagreed on her interpretation of what they saw, it was impressive. He could even admit that it was beautiful.

She was busy sketching, in between one-handedly using her little camera to snap pictures, craning her neck and leaning over to the side to see better, which made his stomach swoop in an uncomfortable place between worry for her safety and arousal at the soft friction. "Listen, if you lose balance and plummet to your death, your friends are going to hunt me down and kill me, which would be a fucking tragic loss," he said half-facetiously, leaning forward to catch her gaze. "Just sit still and tell me where to take the broom, will you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. That would have been very thoughtless of me." She turned in response to his words with a distracted little laugh at his teasing, her round cheek brushing soft and cold against his before she dropped her concentration to her sketch again. The charcoal between her fingertips was making bold, sweeping patterns on the paper, replicating the Mooncalf's dance. She sketched with absolute confidence, her hand following her gaze, with only quick glances back to check her progress as she took in the field from edge to edge.

"I'm done," she said finally, drawing her wand to set the charcoal lines before rolling up the parchment and tucking it inside her robes again. Her fingertips were smudged black with coal and smeared a stripe over her cheekbone to her temple as she tucked her windblown hair behind her ear.

Zach reached forward to feel her hands. They were like lumps of ice. Shaking his head, he took the fingers of his gloves between his teeth and pulled them off. "Put these on while I land us. We'd better get back and warmed up."

***

Her small kitchen had been re-claimed from the ruins. She'd boarded up the still-ruined part of it with planks, and in the few remaining square feet there was a cooking stove, a cooling pantry, a table used both for preparing food and for dining and a bench under the small window to sit on. Zach got a fire started in the stove while she went into the office and put away her sketch, and when she re-joined him, she made them a quick meal of hot tea and sandwiches with Stilton cheese, mushy peas and peaches. Zach wasn't entirely convinced by the mushy peas combination, and lost his ability to breathe for a few seconds when he realised she'd put not only Firewhisky, but chilli powder as well in the tea along with the sugar, but overall it was tasty, it was food in his stomach and warmth in his body and he didn't complain at all.

They sat at either end of the bench, facing each other, their legs drawn up and their cold, bare feet touching, slowly thawing out. Her face was rosy in the glow from the fire, flushed from their cold outing and from the heat indoors and perhaps from the Firewhisky as well. Zach felt a corresponding glow in his own face and tried to fight the relaxation that made his bones seem to want to melt. She was too easy to relax around, and it was bloody nice for a change, in one way, but it also alarmed him, this sodding weakness inside that made him want to respond to that. He reckoned that it was the general scorn he met, the sense of isolation starting to get to him, which was a humiliating admission in itself. He didn't need to get unguarded and loose-tongued on top of everything.

The sound of a frog croaking cut into his thoughts as they hovered between mellowness and alarm. He sat up in surprise and leaned forward, chuckling as he realised. "It was your toes I heard out there all night?"

Luna wiggled her toes with their frog-painted nails and smiled. "Not all of it. They only croak when I wiggle them." She demonstrated, and Zach felt something suspiciously like a snicker coming on. She giggled, too. "It's cheerful, isn't it? That's why I have them that way. Frog croaks are a sound that give some perspective when things get miserable."

"I have a hard time imagining you miserable," Zach admitted, taking another scalding gulp of his tea.

"Oh, it's happened," she said calmly, and he thought of what he'd heard about her, the months in the Malfoys' dungeons while Voldemort lived there, and her father who'd died in captivity in Azkaban, of her mother who'd died when she was still small, and felt rather stupid for his comment.

"Yes, of course. You just seem so–" He sighed, searching for a word that was adequate while not possibly condescending. "Peaceful. But that's got to have been horrible. I mean ... during the war, when you were a prisoner." He wanted to bite his tongue as soon as the words were out. She hardly wanted to talk about that with him.

"They weren't the happiest months in my life," she admitted. "Although to be honest, the year after the battle, doing my last year at Hogwarts, was harder. I missed my father quite a lot, and I was worried about _The Quibbler_ losing readership during the year where I had no opportunity to start it up again, and I..." Her voice drifted off. "Well, things you've seen have a way of coming back to you at nights."

Zach nodded. He knew all about that, even though she might not think he did. Luna Lovegood was a bona-fide heroine of the war, and he still didn't quite understand why she'd wanted to help him, what had compelled her to do such a thing. She'd told him that she wanted to balance out Finnigan's ire against him, that was all well and fine, but it wasn't really an answer as much as another question. Because she shouldn't have one reason to care.

"Why?" Later, he'd blame the Firewhisky in his tea, or the frostbite on his brain, or some such thing. "Why did you intervene for me with the judge, Lovegood? I would have thought that you would despise me quite as easily as the others. That you'd believe every foul thing said about me. You don't, do you?" He hated the way the last question came out sounding something like a plea, but he was too tired to fix it. Too tired right now to try to fix anything, pretty much.

Her silvery eyes had this uncanny understanding in them. "I know you, remember," she said. "You may not remember a lot of it, from when we were younger, but I do. I remember how little you appreciated my company–" she smiled as he half-closed his eyes and tipped his head back with a huff –"but I also remember how you were with Cedric. Loyal to a fault. At ten, you would have followed _him_ into a battle if he'd said the word. You were so determined to be sorted Hufflepuff, like him. You ... had this habit of 'losing' me, but after Cedric had a talk to you about how Hufflepuffs don't ever leave their friends behind, you stopped. I remember you fishing me out of a stream, when I slipped as we were escaping after we'd gone scrumping in old Mrs Winterbottom's orchard. Holding my arm terribly hard and grousing at me all the while. But you didn't leave me behind."

It was true, he'd wanted to make Cedric proud. The Sorting Hat hadn't known what to do with him, vacillating between all the houses. Zach had _begged_ it to put him in Hufflepuff. Not that it mattered much now.

"Yeah, well. Cedric died," Zach said harshly. "Perhaps I forgot the lessons he taught me. That's what everyone believes, isn't it?" And he'd been quick to distance himself from 'Loony' when she started out at Hogwarts. Had she forgotten about that?

"_I_ don't believe that." Luna paused, sipping at her tea. "But mostly," she added, and now her clear, sweet voice lowered and those terribly perceptive eyes glanced away as though awarding him some privacy, "it's that you looked so tired. So tired and angry when you heard what Seamus said as you passed him. And then I wondered how many times you'd heard those words already."

Zach swallowed something tight in his throat that wasn't anything as harmless and concrete as tea, and glanced away. "Yeah," he said gruffly after a minute. "It got old many months ago, I can tell you that."

That warm, gentle smile was on her lips again as she reached out to take his hand. "Also, I've always enjoyed your nose," she continued. "It's got character."

Zach, self-consciously, barely managed not to touch his rather pert (he'd been told), upturned nose, lowering his hand to clasp around his tea mug at the last moment. "It's ... er ... you ... _what_?"

"It's got character. Snape's nose had character, too." Her gaze drifted sideward to the window and she bit her lip. "Voldemort had no nose at all."

Zach couldn't help but grin. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but as far as any nose-to-moral-fibre statistical significance goes, that's rubbish."

"Oh, you're right, of course." Meeting his gaze again, she smiled back, mischief sparkling in her eyes and making everything – really, _everything_ – feel better. "That something's not significant doesn't mean it may not be relevant. Your nose being shaped in a way that I like contributes to the affection that made me not want you to be punished for a misdemeanour that really wasn't so terrible. Snape with a small button nose wouldn't have been able to command nearly the same respect in Potions class. And Voldemort, well, it certainly didn't help his case that he had no nose. It made him harder for most people to relate to."

It was so out of the blue, and delivered with such serene conviction, he threw his head back and laughed. She laughed with him, her small fingers still squeezed around his, and he had a moment of realising that she'd _seen_ Voldemort, lived under the same roof as the monster and been at his mercy, and yet she could throw out something as light-hearted as that, something whimsical and lovely to make him feel better.

The word 'whimsical' was growing on him, too. At least as far as it applied to her. Zach breathed out slowly, dropping his gaze to their touching toes – his long and bony alongside her plump little frog-painted ones – to their entwined fingers ... to her pleased, flushed face. His free hand reached out and touched the charcoal smudge on her cheekbone, his thumb rubbing at the fleck of grey absently. He met her gaze and saw her pupils flare wide and black in hot surprise, and arousal sucker-punched him in the gut.

He wanted to kiss her. But that was crazy. This was crazy. He was serving time with her, as Ernie had (tactlessly) pointed out, and they were so very different. Luna was brilliant in her completely unique way, yet she was also eccentric, impractical, naive, all of them qualities that routinely made him seethe with frustration and impatience.

So why did he feel so amazingly patient as he leaned in and let his lips brush softly over hers?

He tasted surprise and something very sweet and tentative, and drew back a fraction just as he felt her lips sigh and soften and part under his, his eyelashes fluttering heavily as he fought not to just give himself over. Part of him wanted to sink into this thick, delicious comfort and sweep her along with him. Another part of him wondered what the hell he was up to. She was a friend – was fast becoming one, at any rate, and God knew, he could need a friend more than most anything else at the moment. And that was even before getting into how he'd need to work for her for another two months in order for him not to blow it with the judge. He'd be an idiot to jeopardise it. All of it. Wouldn't he?

"I ... I should probably leave," he said. His voice sounded creaky with apprehension and desire.

Her hand touched his hair, smoothing it gently. She looked a bit dreamy, her head tilted to the side on her shoulder. "All right, Zacharias," she whispered. There was a small froggy croak from below and he dropped his gaze to see her toes curl. It made him smile in the midst of his conflicted feelings.

"You know," he said, not knowing what _else_ to say, "you could call me just Zach if you want."

She smiled back. "It's all right, Zacharias," she repeated. "I enjoy calling things by their proper names."

***

One Wednesday night, the doorbell rang outside his small flat, and he opened the door, wand in hand, to find her waiting outside. His eyes widened in surprise. He'd wondered who'd be at the door so late, had been concerned it might be a prank or even someone drunk and random who wanted to tell him how much he sucked – it had happened once – but he'd not expected it to be her. After the night with the Mooncalf, it had become a habit for him to follow her into her small kitchen after a night's work, and be treated to chilli tea and imaginative sandwiches. But they never met outside Mondays and Thursdays, and he'd not asked her around to his flat – it seemed presumptuous, and it was a cramped and charmless place besides.

He hadn't tried to kiss her again.

They didn't talk or acknowledge each other beyond a smile from her and a nod from him when they met at the Leaky Cauldron or the Three Broomsticks. On these occasions, Luna was invariably with friends whom Zach loathed - she was obviously close to Potter and his girlfriend and friends - and he preferred to sit at a table with Hannah or Justin if they were present, or alone. Alone was fine. On a couple of occasions, Tracey Davis happened to be there, and came over to sit with him. They didn't talk much, though he was sure people talked about them. The Hufflepuff traitor and a Slytherin girl. No doubt they'd think that would explain his failure to fight that night, murky sympathies and pure-blooded pride. Which was rubbish. Davis was a brave girl; she was one of two Slytherins he knew of who'd returned to fight after McGonagall sent them away. It was more of a wonder that she wanted to be seen with him. But she knew better, didn't she? And no one wanted to know good things about Slytherins these days, anyway.

"Luna," he greeted her. She had raindrops in her hair, scattered like glistening freckles on her face, and Zach asked himself for something like the sixty-seventh time whether he'd really be an idiot to try to kiss her again, or whether he was one for _not_ trying to kiss her again. "What's going on? I mean ... it's nice to see you–" His voice drifted off. She was practically vibrating with excitement as she drew breath to speak, interrupting him, something that was unheard of from her.

"I'm sorry, I know it's Wednesday, but I've just had a report that the U.F.O.s are there now. Just now! I thought you'd like to come along."

In fact, it felt bloody _brilliant_ that she'd thought he'd like to come along. Zach was already stepping into his boots and reaching for a warm jumper to pull on over his t-shirt. "Wouldn't miss it for the world," he said, and realised it was true. "Where? Where are they? For whatever value of 'they', you understand."

"South of Hogsmeade, in the sky right near the Mooncalf's burrow," she replied breathlessly. "Oh, please hurry–" She was taking his robes down from the hanger as she spoke, holding them open for him, and he grinned at her urgency.

"Faster, huh? I like a girl who knows what she wants." But he was stepping out of the door as he shrugged on the robes, and locking up the flat even as he teased her. If Luna, of all people, was impatient, this must be something worth hurrying for. He wouldn't risk slowing them down by so much as a second.

"Hold on," she said, her wand already raised to Apparate them, and he wrapped an arm around her and held on tight as the darkness squeezed in on them, not letting go until they both had safe foothold on springy moss, surrounded by tall conifer trees.

Something moved amongst the trees, something dark, huge ... skeletal? Zach gave an embarrassingly girly squeak as the creature turned an empty-eyed head towards them, and tightened his arm around Luna, keeping her at his side as he took a few rapid steps back, barely avoiding to land them both on their arses as he stumbled over a mound of grass. "What the ever-loving hell is that?" he gasped.

"Thestrals," Luna said, looking at him in what struck him as a rather strange way. Even for Luna. "They pull the carts with students to Hogwarts, but you can only see them if you've seen someone die. You've never seen them before, have you?"

"Never."

"I doubt there's a single living person who fought at the Battle of Hogwarts who couldn't see them now," Luna said calmly.

"Yeah ... I guess." His pulse still pounded, although her lack of fear and the explanation had filtered through, and now that she'd named them, he recognised their equine shape, the elongated heads. He knew about Thestrals, of course. But he'd never seen them, not during one of his seven years at Hogwarts.

It took exactly three seconds before he realised what she'd just _said_. And what _he_'d just said.

In abrupt confusion, he let his arm fall away from her and raised his gaze above the tree line to find the thing they'd really come here for, postponing looking at her and having to decide how to deal with the fallout of his own loose tongue. Did it really matter? He wasn't sure. It had been a matter of pride all along, but pride didn't seem to have much of a place when he was with Luna.

Luna said nothing, only kept close to him, looking up to the sky, too.

"There..." they both breathed out in unison, and they found each other's hand at once, breaking into a run towards a light that must signify the edge to a clearing.

"Oh," she whispered beside him, both of them stopping short at the edge of the trees, their necks craning back. "Oh, look, _there_ they are."

"What the hell _is_ that," muttered Zach, for the second time in just as many minutes.

Two lights, one blue and one green, were moving in the sky – high up, higher than Muggle aeroplanes flew, Zach thought, although it was hard to be sure. But the _way_ they moved – he'd never seen such a thing. It looked like they were involved in a mating dance, circling each other and then coyly falling away, zipping to different directions in the night sky, far, far apart, and then coming together again fast as lightning.

For a long time, they just stood gawking, gasping at each seemingly breakneck manoeuvre, holding their breath when the lights hovered close. Luna got her camera out and took a few pictures, but she soon put it away again, her attention held by the light show in the sky.

"They're _playing_," Luna whispered, and Zach glanced down to see an awed smile on her face. "They're trying to tell us something–"

"It could be someone on a broomstick," he blurted uneasily. "Wildly disregarding the Statute of Secrecy. Or a couple of those Muggle aeroplanes. All I know is that there's got to be some natural, magical explanation."

"Broomsticks and aeroplanes don't move like that," Luna maintained. "Either of them."

Zach looked at the dancing lights and had to admit as much to himself, although he stubbornly refused to speak said admission out loud. He also refused to acknowledge that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. If the Thestrals had knocked the wind out of him, this was ten times more eerie than that. "Luna, it's simply not possible. To travel the distances you speak of. Millions of light years – have you any idea? It would come up against the limits of magic, or Muggle technology for that matter."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone, somewhere, had found a way to combine magic and technology?" Luna said dreamily. "They're really not so different in their expression, when you take them to extremes. Perhaps on planets far, far away into the cosmos, there are beings that have overcome the differences. Or perhaps they never thought of them as differences; perhaps they saw them as compatible methods to begin with. Just imagine what that could accomplish."

Zach looked at her and shook his head. "It's just ... so far out there," he said. "Why do you waste your time and your perfectly capable brain indulging such useless fancies? About things that not only don't exist, but that don't exist so bloody far away?"

"I don't know," she said airily, dropping her gaze from the sky to settle very precisely on his eyes. "Why do _you_ waste your time and your perfectly capable brain – and a physically fit body, too, might I add – indulging such a useless fancy as Quidditch, Zacharias?"

He put a hand on his chest, giving her an enraged look, although to tell the truth her haughty tone had made it hard to hold back laughter. "You dare call Quidditch useless? It's a perfectly practical and plausible sport, which is more than can be said for your fantastical speculations."

"Quidditch is plausible?" asked Luna with a slow smile. "I'm sure there are those who would contest that."

"Of course it's plausible. It's so plausible, it _can't_ be contested," he argued vehemently.

"It can be questioned by those who can't fly," she pointed out. "Quidditch is a way of playing with flight, exactly like speculations about space travel. Neither is inherently more plausible."

Zach threw his arms out. "You can see Quidditch! With your own eyes! That is more plausible!"

Luna simply raised her open palm in a mildly rhetorical gesture to the dancing lights above them. "And you can't see this?"

"Yes," he admitted on an exasperated exhalation. "But I don't know what it _is_."

"And many people would have no idea what Quidditch was if they saw it," she stated, her voice animated and her eyes laughing at him.

"Luna–"

Before he knew it, he was kissing her. Leaning in awkwardly, scooping her close with one arm around her waist, and feeling the heat of their argument transform into a very different sort of heat as Luna wobbled on her feet for a moment and then found her balance leaning in against him, sweet and eager and dizzyingly co-operative. Her mouth tasted of innocence and of ripe, red berries and her hair smelled like autumn rain, and it went on and on, the meeting of their lips and tongues entrancingly warm and soft compared to the brisk, cold night all around them.

"So you think my body is fit?" Zach rasped on an unsteady breath as he finally released her mouth with a teasing nip to her lower lip.

"Oh, it's just another plausible hypothesis I have," she said with a soft laugh. Her fingers were bunched into the sleeves of his robes. Her lips had a just-kissed flush to them and she was looking very pleased and a little distractedly shy and, Zach thought, completely adorable. Not to mention entirely devourable.

They both seemed to notice the difference in the same instant, both of their glances drifting upward.

"They're gone," Zach said, relieved and unexpectedly wistful at once. It seemed suddenly very dark without the strange lights, and he drew his wand and cast a _Lumos_.

"They'll be back," she said with complete confidence.

He shook his head. "So, what _was_ it you thought that those lights were trying to tell us?"

Luna didn't seem to mind the scepticism ringing in his voice. She was gazing up at the empty, dark sky. "It looked as though they were inviting us to play; trying to tell us that they ... know how to have fun, too. I think they were smiling at us."

He looked at her relaxed, joyful expression, and gave a half-hearted sneer, not at her, but at his own expense. "At you, perhaps. People don't bloody smile at me just at random. I'm sure the same goes for unidentified flying objects and the hypothetical beings therein."

"Wouldn't it be lovely if they did, though?" she asked him.

Zach shrugged, and brushed a strand of rain-damp hair gently away from her face. He wasn't sure if she was talking about the U.F.O.s or about people, now, but it didn't much matter. "It might be refreshing for a change," he admitted ruefully. "But I can't really see it happening. Speaking of Quidditch," he added after a second or two, "I have a bone to pick with you. An old grievance, as it were."

There was a pause, and then a little "Oh," escaped her lips. She dipped her chin, her cheeks pinking. "The Loser's Lurgy thing?" she asked in quite a small voice. "Zacharias, I'm really sorry about that. If someone ever gave you trouble over it, I apologise."

"They gave me trouble over it for weeks," he stressed. "I still sometimes get it thrown my way." Grinning, he tipped her chin up, placing another kiss on her lips. "Not that I've let a non-existent disease hinder me in any way."

"Oh, it's not non-existent. There is a well-documented case every few years, although it's a lot more common in the Caucasus area." Luna looked earnestly shame-faced now. She bit her lip. "I _am_ sorry. You didn't have Loser's Lurgy, Zacharias. I can't claim that I honestly believed that. I'd been annoyed by the way you'd commented on the Gryffindor-Slytherin match – the Gryffindors were such good friends to me, you see, and I thought you'd been rather unfair to them, so when your team struggled on the pitch that day, I gave in to the temptation to – well, get back at you a little, I suppose."

His eyebrows climbed. "Well, well, I must say. That doesn't sound like you."

"Oh, don't–" She shook her head in vigourous denial, still with that rather nice shade of red in her cheeks. "I know, people tend to assume that I don't get ... annoyed, or angry, or feel petty, like others do. And I suppose when people make fun of you all the time, it's so much more tolerable if you can manage not to let them get a rise out of you. But of course I do, I feel all of those things. I find it wiser to keep those impulses in check, but occasionally I don't manage."

Zach had to chew on this. He looked at her, and sighed. "Oh well. You're human; that's something. And at least you're giving me a clean bill of health now. Although my commentary was absolutely not biased." He raised his eyebrows, as she did the same. "At least not more so than Lee Jordan's had always been," he added stubbornly.

"Perhaps not," she conceded, with a small sigh and a little grin.

 

***

They Apparated back to her house. Zach didn't even suggest that he go back to his own place, and Luna didn't bring it up, so he had the impression that he was very welcome. Even though it was late; close to midnight and bedtime.

They went into her office and Luna put the camera away after extracting the roll of film and putting it inside the cramped closet that functioned as her darkroom. Zach leaned on the door jamb and watched her move about. Luna might seem spacey and distracted if you weren't paying attention, but everything she did was neat and precise and purposeful. You just had to know her to know.

His attention was drawn to the poster above her desk, and he nodded to it. "That ... thing, looking like a covered saucer, it's one of those things you think we saw tonight, isn't it?"

"Muggles do call them flying saucers, you know. I don't know if they all look like that, but I love the poster." She smiled, stopping to study it with him. "Dean and Seamus gave it to me for Christmas, they said it was from some kind of television show. That was before I started taking an interest in the U.F.O.s, but the boys said it suited me, and I suppose that is true. I do want to believe. Unless there is conclusive evidence against, of course."

"Most people of your intelligence want to believe only if there is conclusive evidence for," Zach noted. He wasn't really bickering, just stating fact.

"I'm not most people of my intelligence," she said matter-of-factly.

"I'm very glad that you're not." He caught her in a gentle embrace as she moved to the door. Nuzzling against her neck as he tugged her close, he slipped his still rain-wet hands inside her rain-wet robes, barely under her jumper, and traced his fingers over the warm smooth skin of her belly. She shuddered and took a step back, and Zach bit his lip and tensed up, watching her warily.

"Your hands are cold," she explained. "We need to get warm and dry, or we could both catch a cold, or worse, Whooping Whistles. It's probably best if we take off all our clothes."

And with that, she smiled over her shoulder at him and disappeared down the narrow hallway, while Zach stood nailed to the spot for a moment, a cautious grin slowly spreading over his face.

He shrugged off his wet robes and hung them over a chair to dry – it was the armchair that she'd transfigured to a chaise-longue on his first day here, and the memory made him chuckle to himself now. He stripped off his jumper and t-shirt, and kicked off his boots along with his denims. Wearing only his boxer shorts, he followed in her tracks down the hall, marked by discarded yellow robes on top of a dresser, a pale blue jumper on the floor, a soft purple skirt hitched on the gilt frame of the mirror in the hall, two long magenta stockings hung over a lamp-post on the wall, a turquoise bra dangling from the doorknob to the bathroom ... his pulse was racing at this point. Luna wasn't always straightforward to figure out, but this treasure trail had to lead to solid gold, hadn't it? If only because Luna would never be that untidy without a reason.

The shower was on inside the bathroom. Zach opened the door soundlessly, slipping in, and stood for a minute hearing her humming a tune to herself behind the shower curtain that was drawn in front of the bathtub. Her singing voice was pure and sweet. It made him smile. Like so many things about her.

"Is this your idea of getting dry, then?"

There was a clanging _thump_ in the bathtub, and Zach grinned at the thought that he'd flummoxed Miss Lovegood of serene equanimity enough to make her drop her soap in the tub – however the triumph was short-lived as the thump was accompanied by a sucked-in breath and a cry.

"Luna?" He took an alarmed, uncertain step towards the billowing shower curtain. "You all right in there?"

There was a not very convincing, pain-laced groan of "Yes" in reply, and Zach raked his fingers back through his hair in indecision before making up his mind and grabbing the edge of the curtain, stealing a quick peek inside. "God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle–"

His voice faltered as he took in the sight of pale wet limbs and dripping blonde hair and the prettiest pair of breasts swaying as Luna leaned to clutch at her foot. Faint, plaintive frog croaks were coming from her toenails.

"No, it's all right. I just didn't hear you come in. It's nothing too bad, I dropped the shower gel on my toes," she said after a moment. She made no move to cover herself, but was turning pink under his gaze, a wave of colour suffusing her face, her neck and her chest.

Zach took a deep, fortifying breath, dropping the shower curtain and turning to meet his own red-faced apparition in the mirror that was slowly misting over. "Er ... right," he managed. "I ... had intended to ask if you'd mind some company before barging in."

There was silence – long enough to make his heart start to thump painfully. "Well, I was hoping you'd follow the trail," she answered him softly.

"Yeah?" His voice cracked on the word, making him blush more deeply. He glared at himself in the misty mirror. What the fuck was up with all the blushing like a girl? "And what of this hard-on I've got happening here?" he asked, wanting clarification that she knew what was coming.

He heard a sound behind the curtain that sounded quite a lot like stifled laughter. "Your erection is welcome, too, Zacharias."

"Sure? Because if we're both invited, I'm afraid it will be coming in first."

Definitely laughter now, and Zach smirked and pushed his boxers down on his legs, stepping out of them enthusiastically. Contrary to his threat, or was it a promise, he stuck his head in past the curtain first, smiling at her. "Hey," he said softly, giving her a second or two, and when all he saw was bright grey eyes and blushing skin and a warm smile, he followed with the rest of himself.

"You're not only hypothetically fit," she offered generously.

"Thank you," Zach said gravely. He raised an arm and pushed the shower head further up on the pole to accommodate his height. She was slick under the warm spray, soft and smooth with running water as he stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. Her breasts grazed his chest and his erection pressed against the gentle give of her belly. It felt so good. All of it, so very good. Zach stroked her hair, her back. "How are your toes?" he asked hoarsely. "Do they hurt badly?"

"Not too much. I cast a spell just now." He saw her wand lying in the window sill. Small croaks came from the bottom of the bathtub and he glanced down and saw her wiggling her toes to demonstrate.

"You should put some bruise salve on them."

"Not now," she whispered, her head tilted up to meet his gaze, and he felt her heart beating hard against his chest, a rhythm he could see stirring her breasts. "Unless you'd like me to leave and let you shower alone?" She smiled at him, and the combination of innocence and confidence in her expression was the sexiest thing that Zach had ever seen.

"I should have known you'd be a tease," he grumbled. His hands slid to her hips, gliding around at the small of her back and tugging her close to him as he leaned down and kissed her. She was so soft, so curious, and the little moans she made when their tongues met made his prick _ache_.

He got her wand from the window sill and cast a contraceptive spell on them both. "You've done this before?" he murmured, nuzzling against her neck as he put the wand away again and pressed her up against him, needing to make sure.

"Well, not exactly. But I've practised with cucumbers, if that helps," Luna said.

He opened his eyes, and stared at her while the visual slammed into his mind and his prick made a frantic jump against her belly. "Luna," he groaned. "Have you any idea–"

"Well, they're readily available," she explained, blushing under his gaze. "And healthy; you can even eat them afterwards. And the slim ones are a much more comfortable size than courgettes."

Zach was rubbing his prick against her belly because he couldn't help it, wanting so badly to slide himself deep inside her, and yet at the same time he was laughing helplessly and wanted to just stand there and hug her senseless. "Luna, love, you're fucking gorgeous," he breathed. "And sexy – and, oh, _brilliant_..."

He leaned in, slanted his mouth to hers and kissed her in earnest this time, slow and heavy and passionate kisses while his hands cupped her breasts and his fingers toyed with her nipples, stroking and teasing them into stiff little peaks. She enjoyed that, she was pressing into his hands and whimpering into his mouth and wriggling her hips against him in needy, insistent circles, and when he trailed one hand down over her belly and into her soft wet curls, she gasped and broke free of his lips and turned to lean against the shower wall, her eyes heavy-lidded, her knees sagging.

Zach followed without hesitation, his fingers slick already from that first careful push inside her folds. He was slack-jawed with lust as he tested her; she was so incredibly wet for him. He smeared the slickness over her clit, circling down firmly with two fingertips, and her head lolled against the wall.

"Oh, yes. That feels so nice," she got out, licking her lips as she panted hard, and Zach wrapped his free arm around her waist to steady her. He kissed her softly, drinking down the moans and the catches in her breath while his fingers worked her to a trembling fever pitch until she shuddered hard and cried and whimpered and bucked into his hand. Murmuring encouragement, he pressed down with the heel of his hand and slipped his fingers inside her and felt her muscles grip and tug at him in rhythmic, hungry pulses.

Before she'd stopped clenching around him he'd slipped his fingers free and got his hands curving around her arse, hoisting her up. Her arms came around his neck as she tilted her hips just so to meet him, to _find_ him, and he gave something between a growl and a cry, pressing her hard up against the wall as his hips surged forward to sheath his prick inside her completely.

He forced himself somehow to get a grip, and pressed in slowly, gliding on her wetness. He was shaking from the sensation, and from trying to maintain some control and allow her to adjust. She was tight and hot around him and her expression was so damned beautiful, showing nothing but wonder and pleasure.

"Oh, you feel ever so much better than cucumbers," she breathed out against his neck.

"Thanks, I think," he replied unsteadily, grinning at her, but the grin turned into a grimace of sheer pleasure overload as he pulled slowly out of her clutching heat and pressed back up. Oh, God. That felt bloody wonderful, and her soft arms were wound tight around his neck and her firm thighs clasped around his waist as she rocked down, all of her holding on to him so hard, trying to meet him already.

He wanted it to last, but it took perhaps a minute, two at the most, the pressure and heat and Luna's eager, soft little noises as she rode his thrusts spurring him on to a shaking edge of intensity. He pressed her against the wall and spread her thighs wider with his hands, grunting as he rutted up inside her, and when he heard her gasp out as she tightened once more and pulsed around his prick – _"Zacharias, oh, Zach ... Zach..."_ – Zach was groaning and lost, his arse clenching and his eyes closing tight as he exploded in a few shaky last lunges inside her.

"Made you say it," he muttered on a breathless, husky laugh as he surfaced to the world again, both of them shaky-legged as he eased himself out of her and lowered her gently to stand with him under the steady spray of water.

He felt more carefree than he could remember in ever so long when she laughed in response and leaned against him, trusting him with all her weight, boneless and relaxed.

"That's not quite fair. It's very hard to get out the whole of a four-syllable name when you're having an orgasm, Zacharias."

***

"Who was it you watched die?"

Her fingertips were painting slow, soothing strokes over his bare arm, curving over his bicep, caressing gently back up to his shoulder. Lying under warm covers with her in his arms, as matter-of-fact as she was, so soft-voiced, it was not only easy to tell, it was impossible _not_ to tell. And Zach didn't question it. He'd been too proud to talk for a long time. Too angry and stubborn. It was strangely liberating to let it go.

"Corner," he said. "Michael Corner. And others, I suppose, but I don't know who they were. At the Battle of Hogwarts."

She nodded, not saying anything, not so much as a question in her eyes, just a kindness that made the words flow that much easier. It helped, just like the skin-to-skin warmth, and the flickering candlelight in the room that was barely big enough for the bed, and the close walls protecting them from the outside. Not that Zach would ever admit that he _needed_ such protection. But it eased things along, all the same.

But where to start was another question. Zach drew a breath that felt a bit too tight, too many images tumbling around his head, and then just went for the most immediate, the one he churned to explain. "My little brother, Jonah, was trying to sneak away, when they were herding out the younger students. Merlin, that kid is such a brat. He was all starry-eyed over the DA when they started their stunts against the Carrows, and furious at me when I pulled out. Even if it was for his sake. I had one detention. He-Carrow said they'd take Jonah and Crucio him before my eyes at the next one. So I made sure there wouldn't be a next one."

"I remember," Luna said. "You told Susan, and she told the rest of us. We didn't think any worse of you for that, you know."

Zach snorted. "Not you, maybe. Some believed it was an excuse, something I'd made up. Easy to tell, from the way they looked at me. But I didn't give a shit – well, yeah, I suppose I can admit that I did, but not enough to try to explain. They wouldn't have believed me at any rate."

"So when I saw Jonah trying to get away from the first-years – fuck, I didn't even think about it. I ran to get hold of him and I stayed at his heel and marched him by the scruff of his neck to the Hog's Head. Flooed him home to my parents and made sure they had him well in hand before I told them I'd have to go back. Which, by the way, wasn't the easiest thing I've done."

He sighed, glancing down at her, her head on his shoulder, her blonde hair spread in tangles over his skin, nearly the same shade as his. He ran the fingers of one hand through the soft strands, absently. "I did, though. I stepped into that Floo and I got out at the Hog's Head, except ... there wasn't a secret passage anymore. All of that had just gone away. So I ran out, through Hogsmeade and up to Hogwarts' gates."

"It must have been after the dark spell that Vincent Crabbe had cast on Harry," Luna said, her voice hushed but clear. "The Fiendfyre that had destroyed the Room of Hidden Things. The Room of Requirement vanished with it."

Zach nodded. "I figured that out later, after reading the papers. Anyway, I made it to the Hogwarts grounds, though it took me close to an hour, probably; there were still Death Eater guards about. Once I got inside the gates, there were scattered groups fighting everywhere. I moved around trying to find Susan, because we'd agreed to stick together, so when I spotted her fighting alongside a few other students near the greenhouses, I joined them there. It was Susan, and Michael – he was her boyfriend, you know – and two Slytherin students who'd returned back inside to fight on our side." He let out a flat chuckle. "Who'd have thought? It was that girl in our year, Tracey Davis, and then Zabini of all people. He still barely acknowledges me with the twitch of a muscle in his jaw when we cross paths. I guess that he just really didn't want Voldemort to win."

Zach paused to think back and piece things together in their right sequence, struggling against an uneasy wall of resistance in his mind. Here came the hardest part, and he'd spent so much energy keeping the details well at bay. "We were trying to hold the dangerous plants greenhouse, and there were two Death Eaters trying to blast us down. They got Corner after a while and Susan lost it a little bit. Then someone clutched at my arm and I looked and it was her; she'd been hit by some curse. She was bleeding out of her mouth and she couldn't talk. But her eyes, they were begging me. I didn't fucking know what to do. The Slytherins didn't stand much chance on their own if I left with Susan, not with Corner gone, too. But Davis shoved me off, saying they'd cover me, so I took Susan in my arms and carried her to the gates. The battle was getting closer to the castle, and it was quicker than trying to fight it up to the hospital wing. Hell, I'd no idea whether there even still _was_ a hospital wing."

"So, I Apparated us from the gates to St Mungo's, and the Healers took over. They mended my arm, too; it had taken a hit. And I ... I couldn't leave Susan. She was fighting for her life, and she was clinging to my hand, and they said it might make a difference if I stayed. So ... I stayed. End of story." Zach drew a breath, staring at the ceiling. "Or, you know, not."

There were paintings on the ceiling. Paintings of people. He hadn't noticed before in the half-lit room, not even when Luna had straddled his hips and rocked gently on top of him, setting them both on the most fantastic sort of fire. Especially not then.

He could make them out now, though, and he grimaced. It was Potter. How fucking appropriate. And Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, bloody Ginny Weasley...

Luna followed his gaze. "Harry saw you run to beat the first-years to the front of the queue," she said quietly. "At least, that's what he thought."

"Harry can't stand me; he saw what he expected to see," Zach said bluntly. "I never even noticed him, when I ran for Jonah. But I realised quickly that when you've got the bloody hero of a war and his trusted friends saying you're a coward, then rumour becomes accepted truth faster than you can get your wind back to put up a defence."

Luna's gaze had returned to him as he talked. Those eyes of hers, pale yet vivid, and so perceptive, so accepting. Being held in that gaze was comforting and a bit scary at once. She was a lot to live up to. One small, strong hand found his own lying in a fist on his sternum, and wrapped around it, her thumb smoothing the back of his hand. "Why didn't you explain to your friends, Zacharias?"

He shrugged, with a bitter twitch to his mouth. "I never thought explanations would be warranted, did I? I went back to my family in the morning and it was days later that I realised what was being said about me. And then – I realised the other 'Puffs were staying away. They'd already heard how I'd left the battle like a traitor, a deserter. They'd not seen me during the battle and they simply assumed the worst. And I guess ... I was furious. Torn up over Susan and stunned by the hostility I met and given up by the people who were supposed to be my friends. I figured when Susan woke up and they found out, they'd be utterly shamed, and I _wanted_ that, I was that petty." Zach rubbed at his eyes, tired. "But Susan's not woken up yet."

"And I suppose at some point it felt too late to explain," Luna said softly. He nodded sharply, relieved that she got it, nearly undone by the kindness in her voice, clear and quiet like a small, delicate bell in the hush after his own words.

"There was nothing to support my story," he said with a shrug. "Susan in a coma, Corner dead, and who was going to listen to two Slyths back then? Everyone was crazy about Potter and Gryffindor, the DA and the Order. Citing Slytherins as a reference wouldn't have impressed anyone. They were the _bad_ guys, still are in most people's view. And, yes, at some point it did get too late. I would have made myself look worse, everyone would have thought I was making up stories. So I tell myself ... hell, I don't know." He sighed. "That it doesn't matter, that I don't care."

She raised herself up on an elbow, regarding him solemnly for long seconds before she leaned in and placed a kiss at the corner of his mouth. "But you do care."

Zach slipped his hand into her long hair, meeting her troubled gaze with a sort of smile. "I'm not sure how much I care, any longer. But ... I care about you. And now _you_ know. That counts for something, yeah?"

"Oh, yes." She settled down with her head on his shoulder again, her hand reaching to tug the covers better over them before her arm settled with a tender possessiveness over his waist. "It counts for a lot. I'm glad you told me."

"You really need to repaint this ceiling," Zach added after a minute, and was rewarded with a burst of silent giggles, her slender shoulders shaking slightly in his embrace.

"I'd never really considered this situation before, but I see what you mean," she admitted, following his gaze. "I'm very fond of them, but since you are not, perhaps we can move the bed into the other room."

Moving heavy furniture sounded like a long-term arrangement. Squeezing her close, Zach closed his eyes against the offending ceiling, and burrowed his face into her hair, unable to help smiling as he breathed her in. "Works for me."

***

The lunch room of the Wasps was as noisy and smelly as ever. Odours of sweat, chilli and pitch black tea hung in the air as Zach balanced his tray over to his regular place at the table.

The general atmosphere was good. The Wasps had made a good run this season and so far they looked set to come out in the upper half of the league before the New Year. That hadn't happened in a decade. Zach knew he had his own share of the credit, too; he'd had a great season, considerably better than last year.

He was inclined to share that credit with Luna. Zach was very aware of the difference she'd made, inviting him into her life. He'd learned to have fun again, never a great talent of his outside the pitch, and one he hadn't exercised much for the last few years at all. She made things brilliant. Exciting. She'd made him better at everything.

She'd turned up at his last few matches wearing yellow and black for the Wasps, and perhaps for Hufflepuff. The growling badger necklace had definitely been for him. His team-mates were ribbing him good-naturedly about his girlfriend, even about his _Quibbler_ activities, because he'd become far less sensitive about it. In the last couple of weeks, he'd helped Luna distribute the new editions, hot from the press, to shops and newspaper stands that sold them.

She was a very cuddly addition to his nights, as well. Zach was grinning to himself thinking of the particular activities of the night before, as he inched down on his seat and picked up his fork. He loved lavishing all his imagination and attention on her, to make her head toss on the pillows, to make her back arch off the bed, and her toes curl with pleasure. He'd probably never be able to hear a frog croak again without getting a hard-on, but he could live with that.

It took half a minute before he noticed the silence around him. Raising his eyebrows, he sat up, and stopped chewing for a moment as he took in the gazes turned towards him. People glanced away and started talking again, but from right across the table, Tristan shoved something in front of him.

It was that morning's edition of _The Quibbler_. Zach's lips twitched, expecting some remark that he was prepared to shrug off or give back as good as he got, while his gaze dropped to the front page and he took in the headlines.

_'U.F.O.s – friends across the light years'_, was the first he saw. _'On the tracks of the Humping Fireturtle'_. He grinned. That had been a fun one. They'd caught a Portkey to the Canary Islands and there'd been humping before long, all right, if not exactly by any Fireturtles. _'Unsung heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts'_.

Everything in his mind seemed to hum and turn quiet for a moment. Then his stomach twisted in belated shock as he took in the pictures on the front page. Tracey was there. Zabini. Himself.

And people were looking again. Taking in his reaction, that he'd not known a thing about this. Abruptly, he pushed his chair back, throwing down his napkin on his plate. "I'm taking an extended lunch break," he bit out, grabbed his wand and Apparated into Diagon Alley in front of the Leaky Cauldron.

She always took her lunch there, and he found her at her regular table. Pushing his way past other tables and chairs, mindless of displeased outbursts from other customers, he stopped right in front of her and threw the paper down at the table, so upset he was shaking.

"What the hell were you thinking? I'm not enough of a laughing stock as it is? The _fuck_, Luna? U.F.O.s, Humping Fireturtles and me? Thank you for ensuring that no one will believe a word of my story, ever!" His voice was shaking, too. She'd stopped eating, looking at him like a startled deer, and he felt sick from shock and from churning anger and from that look in her eyes that made everything ten times worse.  
He hated to hurt her, but bloody hell, she should have known better than this.

Someone was talking beside him. Actually it was less like talking and more like someone saying 'Grr. Growl. Argh,' under their breath. He glanced aside. Only now did it register through his seething temper that Luna had company at her table. It was Ginny Weasley and Granger. Of course. Bar Potter himself, there were hardly anyone he less wanted to see at the moment.

"What is it, Weasley," he spat out. "Anything on your mind? I'm sure it's nothing I haven't heard before, but by all means don't let that stop you."

"I _was going_ to apologise," she ground out. "As much as I bloody hate to, because you've always been a tosser, Smith. But you know, I don't think I want to. I think I'm just going to let you prance around playing martyr. You're so fucking good at it."

Zach's hands curled into fists. He gripped the edge of the table, determined not to let this escalate like he had done repeatedly before. He couldn't afford that. That was one lesson that had stuck. Besides, she was a girl. Of sorts. "Fine by me. Considering how you're ace at playing High Queen of Gryffindor and better than everyone else, I shall leave you to that, as well," he snarled, and turned towards Luna again.

She wasn't there. He straightened himself up, a strand of panic creeping into his anger. She had _gone_. The look on her face – he'd hurt her, really hurt her, and although he'd been hurt as well, he was suddenly as scared as he was angry. It took something to make Luna look like that.

"Fuck," he muttered, looking around the pub, whirling around with clenched teeth as someone yanked at his shirt sleeve. "Weasley, I swear to God if you don't–"

It was Granger, this time. "Zacharias, calm down," she said in that prissy, know-it-all voice. At least she was better than the she-Weasel, although Zach still glared at her.

"I'm calm," he said coldly.

She looked distressed. "Listen, it's terrible that you've had your name slandered – if I've ever contributed to that, I do apologise. I'm sure Harry will, as well. It was a really unfortunate misunderstanding–"

"That wouldn't have happened if this git hadn't thrown the sulking fit of a decade," Weasley cut in, arms crossed over her chest.

"Shh, Ginny," Granger pleaded. "Zacharias, surely you must know that Luna only did what she thought best? Have you even looked at this?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he managed. "Nothing in _The Quibbler_ has a chance to be taken seriously. I don't fucking care. I just–"

"It's not about _you_. It's about the Slytherins who returned to fight, and have been largely ignored." Granger leaned over and flipped the pages open. "There were six of them, two died in the battle. It was an important story to tell, and you're only quoted as an eyewitness. Luna told your story without making it _your_ story." Irritation seemed to be overcoming her contriteness, because she thrust the paper up right under his nose, shaking the pages. "And sure people take _The Quibbler_ seriously. Much more than before, at any rate. We all know it prints a lot of junk, but when it comes to current politics, Luna's paper is more reputable than _The Prophet_. Not that it says a lot, but still. She's cleared your name, Zacharias!"

He stepped back from the pages fluttering in his face, staring with mingled despair and stubborn dislike at the two young women who were both presently saying 'Grr. Growl. Arghh' to him with their eyes. "Well, fuck you too. I love Luna," he stated, aiming for defiance, although it came out sounding more defeated than he'd wanted it to. If he'd been an idiot, he'd never admit it in present company.

He grabbed his wand, leaving the self-righteous Lionesses to their growling, and Apparated straight to The Rook. But there was no sign of her at home, and the wards wouldn't let him inside.

***

"Which of these," asked Zach, "are most likely to be, well, you know ..." He blushed, and cursed himself for it. "Real?"

Hagrid gave him a narrow, appraising look, his huge hand stroking his beard. "What ruddy prank is this, Smith? Of all the smug gits rolling their eyes behind me back, yer face sticks wi' me. Ye didn't have no respect or liking fer magical creatures, and ye'll have me believe that ye're interested in mythical beasts?"

Zach felt his gut clench as Hagrid crammed his list back into his pocket and turned to go. "Wait!" He sighed and squirmed, vexed, and glared a moment at Hagrid's back, before stepping up to grip his sleeve. "_Please_!"

Slowly, Hagrid half turned to face him, his gaze dropping to Zach's hand on his arm until Zach released the sleeve, grumbling inside.

"I've got seven Blast-Ended Skrewts to see to and they're all better tempered than ye." Hagrid was grumbling too, only out loud.

"Right. Just ... listen." Zach was hard put to get the words past his lips, churning with annoyance and sore pride and anxiety. "It's for ... a friend. She believes in these things, but she hasn't ever seen any. And I, I happened to be, I suppose, a tad insensitive–" he swallowed, hearing Hagrid give a sound between a scoff and a chuckle – "and I need .... want ... to make it up to her."

"So what are ye going to do, then? Hunt down a Snorkack and bring it to Luna Lovegood as a trophy? You've got yer work cut out for ye. That lass could no doubt do a better job of it herself."

The heat radiating from Zach's face was a clear sign that he'd gone bright red. Of course Hagrid had guessed. How many girls went around talking about Nifflers and Blibbering Humdingers? "Snorkacks?" he asked, sticking to the issue with dogged determination. "They're the best bet? Are they ... actually to be found somewhere on this earthly plane?"

"Sure they are. Scandinavia," Hagrid said, cunning beady eyes fixed on Zacharias's face. "Deep among the lakes and woods, so they say. I haven't seen them, but I know them who've seen them _and_ survived to tell the tale."

"Who?" asked Zach bluntly.

"Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank herself, fer starters. Ye know where to find her?"

Zach shook his head mutely, and Hagrid sighed. "Runespoor Cottage, west of Hogsmeade on the edge of the Forest. I'll owl her to say that ye're coming."

***

The December sky was a vast indigo blue, hung like a gorgeous tapestry of stars over the Norwegian mountains. The moon threw a pale-gold cast on the sparkling dunes of a recent snowfall, and the constellations wheeling their slow dance all around it seemed to be trembling with the cold of the night.

It was perhaps the prettiest place that Zach had seen in his life.

Earlier, at five, he'd heard church bells toll in Christmas Eve down in the mountain valley; he'd seen a squirrel streak up the trunk of a pine tree and a raven beat a silent, black path across the sky. But now, the only sign of life were the almost snowed-over tracks of the way he'd made here over the nearest hilltop with his local guide, a Norwegian wizard who'd been quite blasé about the strange phenomena regularly taking place in the skies above his neighbourhood, and used to U.F.O. tourists travelling here on a regular basis. Zach had been relieved to find a thriving wizarding community near the U.F.O. hotspot of Hessdalen. He'd been queasy just at the thought of braving a Muggle car or a pair of skis. It had been very convenient to get a local guide who was completely on board with Apparition as transport.

He checked his wristwatch. It had been ten hours since he'd sent the owl with the Portkey. It wasn't that far across the North Sea to England. If she wanted to come, she ought to be here soon. If not ... Zach swallowed and threw the snowball he'd been forming between his gloved hands across the glittering expanse of snow.

If not, he'd bloody well think of something else, that's what. If there was one Hufflepuff quality Zach Smith had in spades, it was tenacity.

She appeared between one moment and the next, stumbling and grasping for balance in loose new snow, still hugging the Portkey in the crook of her arm. It was a wooden carving of a Snorkack that he'd bought at the wizarding souvenir shop in the valley. Zach was on his feet in the same second, snow flying around him as he ran to meet her. He had her in his arms in an instant, lifting her off her feet, all the anxiety of the previous week exploding in his relief to see her.

His heart pounding, he set her on her feet again, almost scared to look at her face. What if she was still angry with him? In that particular cool and shut-off way that Luna could be. But she was smiling, her eyes uncertain but full of wonder as she turned around in a circle, taking in the surroundings and the skies above. And, to the south, the hanging points of fire in the air, moving in strange circles of attraction and repulsion, fading out of the sky before suddenly flaring to life and dropping at unimaginable speed, evening out, rising...

Zach had been holding his breath. "I was meaning to find you Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," he said when he couldn't stand it anymore. "Willa – that is, Professor Grubbly-Plank – directed me here. But the locals told me that it would have to wait until the spring now, after the Snorkacks' winter sleep, and even then I'd only have a very slim chance of finding one. They're tremendously shy."

Luna had stopped in her tracks. She carefully set the Snorkack down. "I know that. But I didn't know you knew Willa."

"Well, I didn't," Zach answered, "but I do now."

She smiled at him, less tentative, her expression warming with affection. "She's an old friend of my father's. He didn't always see eye to eye with her, and neither do I, but she's a very knowledgeable woman."

"She said the same about you," Zach said. "Nearly verbatim." He studied her hungrily, standing there like an apparition of warmth and light in the cold night. He was glad to see she'd put on warm clothes, like he'd asked her to. Suddenly uncertain how to proceed, he stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Luna," he said quietly, "I wanted to apologise. I wanted to make it up to you. And I didn't want to wait for the Snorkacks to wake up."

She looked like she was going to cry, for a moment. "I'm glad you didn't," she whispered. "I wanted to apologise too, for not preparing you beforehand, and you have nothing to make up to me. And this–" she gestured to the sky – "is quite as good as Snorkacks. It would be, even without U.F.O.s in it."

He held out his hand to her. "I've got sheepskins here. And heating charms, and a fire. It's probably not how you wanted to spend Christmas Eve–"

"Oh yes," she interrupted him, launching herself at him in a four-limbed hug, the force of which threatened to send him on his arse back into the soft snow. With fine-honed Quidditch instincts he caught his balance, his arms going around her, and Luna pressed her cheek to his, whispering in his ear. "There's no place I'd rather spend Christmas Eve than with you, Zacharias."

It took a bit before they made it out of that embrace. Luna was kissing him so thoroughly that Zach saw a double set of stars. He saw no reason to interrupt her.

"You have nothing to apologise for," he told her when they were settled snugly into the sheepskins with a panoramic view of mountains and snow-clad fir trees and the strange lights burning in the sky. "I was an idiot, not for the first and probably not for the last time. I read the article. It was brilliant. And people have been very nice about it, for the most part." He said the last bit with a touch of wonder. Granted, some were still jerks. But the Hufflepuffs seemed very relieved to have Zach back in the fold. Contrary to what one might have expected, Hannah had smacked him, and given him a long scolding about the pitfalls of stubbornness and pride, while Ernie had given him a manly hug and looked like he wanted to start blubbering. It had been extremely awkward, and very strange. But also strangely nice.

"I was hoping it would make things better for you," she said softly. "But I should have prepared you. I didn't want to ask you and get a no, because I thought it was an important story to run. _The Quibbler_ is committed to telling the truths no one else will tell. But it was wrong of me not to take the fight and get you to agree."

Zach met her gaze. "I was angry and I spoke without thinking. _The Quibbler_ has grown on me since I started, you know. A whole lot."

She sighed, putting her head on his shoulder. "I know I can be overly sensitive about _The Quibbler_. I ... I know that not everything my father believed in exists, but many things do. For instance, Blibbering Humdingers probably don't exist, but there is a very good case for Wrackspurts and Snorkacks. And even if he was wrong about some things, he was a very fearless and honest mind. I don't want to betray his vision. I don't want to let the paper get safe and predictable."

"I think he'd be very proud of you," Zach said, rubbing her shoulder. "As am I." He gazed into the sky, silent for a minute. "It's a strange coincidence, you know, that one of the most magical places in Scandinavia is also a U.F.O. hotspot. I wonder if there's a connection."

Luna eyed him thoughtfully. "I don't believe in coincidence," she said. "But I thought you did."

"Oh, I do." He frowned. "Absolutely. But not everything can be a coincidence. There's circumstantial evidence that points to a connection between U.F.O.s and magic. The U.F.O.s we saw over the Mooncalf's circle, and now this. I _don't_ believe that they are wizards who have sailed here in ships from the stars," he said with emphasis, "and I'll _never_ believe that they're bloody smiling at me." He smirked at her in affectionate provocation. "Maybe at you, but not me. But I _do_ think it's interesting enough that it's worth trying to find out if there's a magical component to this. It would be a perfect case for _The Quibbler_. I doubt you'll be rid of me when my three months are up."

"Oh, I'm thrilled to hear that," Luna said, beaming at him. "I told Periwinkle Brown that I thought you'd be an excellent match for us, and it's proven so true. She'll be so pleased when she learns how it's all turned out. She rather liked you, you know."

"Well, if that's how she rather likes people," he replied with a sigh, after a moment to process this, "I shall be most grateful to not have her displeasure hanging over my head."

Luna laughed, and Zach squeezed his arm around her waist, feeling a bit diffident. "You're interested in keeping me on as a future prospect then? If I commit my future to trying to curb my natural tendency to be an arse..."

"Zacharias," she said, manoeuvring her legs over his lap and tugging his head down to hers, "your natural tendency to be an arse turns me on quite a lot. And I think you're a very promising future prospect. For me, and _The Quibbler_, both."

Their lips touched, then lingered as they nestled together into the warm, soft skins, and love was not only plausible but a quite tangible thing, under the skies strewn with hypotheses and stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave feedback [here](http://community.livejournal.com/smutty_claus/126048.html?mode=reply).


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